WH warned for months of ObamaCare exchange debacle

posted at 8:01 am on October 9, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

Most Americans are angered, frustrated, and surprised by the news that the ObamaCare exchanges which the law will force the self-insured to use don’t work — after three and a half years of preparation. One group, however, cannot claim surprise or shock. The Washington Post reports that the White House has been repeatedly warned for months by all of the other stakeholders in the system of the disaster that was coming:

Major insurers, state health-care officials and Democratic allies repeatedly warned the Obama administration in recent months that the new federal health-insurance exchange had significant problems, according to people familiar with the conversations. Despite those warnings and intense criticism from Republicans, the White House proceeded with an Oct. 1 launch.

A week after the federal Web site opened, technical problems continued to plague the system, and on Tuesday people were locked out until 10 a.m., although some applicants were able to sign up as the day went on. Officials said they were working 24 hours a day to improve the system and that they were confident it would soon be able to meet the demand. They added that there was ample time to correct the site to allow consumers to get insured by Jan. 1. …

Two allies of the administration, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the controversy surrounding the rollout, said they approached White House officials this year to raise concerns that the federal exchange was not ready to launch. In both cases, Obama officials assured them there was no cause for alarm.

Robert Laszewski, a health-care consultant with clients in the insurance industry, said insurers were complaining loudly that the site, www.healthcare.gov, was not working smoothly during frequent teleconferences with officials at the Department of Health and Human Services before the exchange’s launch and afterward. “People were pulling out their hair,” he said.

This revelation makes the Obama administration’s decision to refuse any delays in the individual mandate even more puzzling. Don’t forget that the White House had already announced unilateral (and arguably illegal) waivers for mandates on employers for coverage and insurers for out-of-pocket caps, two key provisions of the ObamaCare structure. By the end of summer, we also knew that the exchanges wouldn’t be able to connect to the IRS to verify income levels, leaving the subsidies open to fraud, and that the protections for sensitive consumer data would not be in place, either.

Why, then, did the White House refuse a delay? Two reasons come to mind. One is that they saw any delay in the individual mandate as potentially deadly for the system, and the other is that it would be deadly for Democrats. Imagine that this happened a month before the midterm elections, rather than 13 months ahead of them. Of course, the extra year could have given the White House more time to avoid most of the problems we’re seeing now — but they had more than three years already to produce a working system.

Once you finally make it into HealthCare.gov, it’s not clear how you get out.

For those who’ve busted through glitches on the federal Obamacare insurance website to create an account, there’s no clear, obvious way for consumers to delete the accounts if they choose — at least not in the current incarnation.

A POLITICO reporter used HealthCare.gov’s customer support chat to request that an account be removed, but the support agent said the request would have to be referred to an “advanced” customer service system.

The option to delete account information has become a staple of online services, from Facebook to Amazon. But HealthCare.gov isn’t a private-sector business transaction. And on the federal health insurance portal, people for at least the next few weeks will have to create a basic account even to browse health plan options. That doesn’t require all the personal and financial information that would be added to actually enroll in a health plan or seek government subsidies.

It’s like the Hotel California – you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

A reader shared this with us today. Seems appropriate to use in this post.

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The really pathetic thing is that the UK, Canada, etc, have long waiting lists for treatment, but their systems are, at least, delivering healthcare to more than a % of 1%. Error404Care hasn’t even begun to deliver real insurance – those that have been able to begin to purchase a policy are signing up to buy insurance that will go into effect in 2014.

From my readings of Soviet communist history, Stalin never listened to such things when rolling out the latest 5 yr plan. And heads literally rolled when it didn’t work out. Interesting. So many parallels here…

This revelation makes the Obama administration’s decision to refuse any delays in the individual mandate even more puzzling.

I think Rush has this point correct. The lazy stupid coward thinks that once you get people enrolled and reaping all that free stuff it will be harder to dismantle the ACA from its present form. For example, everybody regardless of gender or age is going to be charged for pre-natal and maternity coverage. A simple fix would be to structure the coverage based on rational need. Easier to do now than when the charge can be made that Congress is trying to gut pregnancy coverage from the ACA.

In short, the lazy stupid coward wants to get as many Americans addicted to Obamacare as quickly as possible.

Once customers sign up, how is “the system” going to know that payment is current?

It seems to me that getting the young and healthy to sign up is the easy part (even though that is not so easy). Getting them to cough up $100 a month will be difficult, especially when they realize they aren’t using the services.

Let’s see, he mouths off about a red line in Syria an then decides to force it anyway without caring what America want and then he does the same with Obamacare rollout, knowing full well that it will be a disaster, but like all self-proclaimed messiahs he goes ahead anyway.
it’s almost as if by default he seeks to cause havoc.

I think Rush has this point correct. The lazy stupid coward thinks that once you get people enrolled and reaping all that free stuff it will be harder to dismantle the ACA from its present form.

Happy Nomad on October 9, 2013 at 8:15 AM

Which only highlights the idiotic nature of this administration. What free stuff? Most everyone who currently self insures are going to see a premium and deductible rise, and those who chose to remain uninsured sure as heck aren’t going to see any financial benefit to signing up themselves. “Free” rubbers and birth control pills for only thousands of dollars a year? That’s gonna bring them in?

Once customers sign up, how is “the system” going to know that payment is current?

It seems to me that getting the young and healthy to sign up is the easy part (even though that is not so easy). Getting them to cough up $100 a month will be difficult, especially when they realize they aren’t using the services.

Deafdog on October 9, 2013 at 8:21 AM

That’s the beauty of fascism (the mixture of government and business). Since the insurers will be beholden to the government they will more than likely alert the government for lapse of coverage or non-payment.

Of course obama knows more about programing than his programmers do. He told us so.

Face it obama is like the loud mouthed jerk in the office who once given an assignment does it half-assed. If by some miracle it succeeds he takes all the credit, If it goes south, it’s everyone’s fault but his own.

I just read something yesterday that one of the questions they ask is what is your credit score and that this was for the insurance companies so the premiums would be higher for people with not good credit. Now, alot of people do not know their credit score and I would imagine that alot of the lower income people may not have very high ones. I don’t think this is going to help the people this debacle was supposed to help.

Once customers sign up, how is “the system” going to know that payment is current?

It seems to me that getting the young and healthy to sign up is the easy part (even though that is not so easy). Getting them to cough up $100 a month will be difficult, especially when they realize they aren’t using the services.

Deafdog on October 9, 2013 at 8:21 AM

Don’t you think that somehow these creeps will have a feature by which the insured has to provide a source for online payment (bank account, credit card, debit card) and which will require the source to report that payments are current?

What will be interesting to see is how easy it will be for people to drop out of Obamacare and go rogue. I’ll bet that they’ll have to cancel the card or close the account just to get the automatic payments to stop.

Face it obama is like the loud mouthed jerk in the office who once given an assignment does it half-assed. If by some miracle it succeeds he takes all the credit, If it goes south, it’s everyone’s fault but his own.

HumpBot Salvation on October 9, 2013 at 8:29 AM

He’s also the yutz who claims to be an expert at everything. So you give him the job of changing your car’s oil and when you come back a half hour later the alternator is sitting on the block, the dash cover has been removed, transmission fluid is puddled on the floor, and Bark is nowhere to be found.

“Free” rubbers and birth control pills for only thousands of dollars a year? That’s gonna bring them in?

NotCoach on October 9, 2013 at 8:26 AM

For the low-income parasites the left depends on for winning elections, yes. They will have their healthcare subsidized just like the rest of their life comes through the hard work and productivity of others.

Face it obama is like the loud mouthed jerk in the office who once given an assignment does it half-assed. If by some miracle it succeeds he takes all the credit, If it goes south, it’s everyone’s fault but his own.

HumpBot Salvation on October 9, 2013 at 8:29 AM

He’s also the yutz who claims to be an expert at everything. So you give him the job of changing your car’s oil and when you come back a half hour later the alternator is sitting on the block, the dash cover has been removed, transmission fluid is puddled on the floor, and Bark is nowhere to be found.

Bishop on October 9, 2013 at 8:36 AM

He’s the guy who in group projects in college who argues every point with the group, demands group meetings revolve around his schedule, doesn’t come through with his part of the project until a half-assed effort three days after it was due (day before the project due to the professor), and insists that his name goes at the top of the list of team members.

He’s like Jean Luc Picard. He sits in his Captain’s chair and says “make it so”. It’s all supposed to work after that.

tj4osu on October 9, 2013 at 8:41 AM

He’s never claimed to be a “detail person.” ;0

Seriously, he’s there for the photo-ops but doesn’t get his hands dirty with the actual work. And that has mostly worked for him. It’s a real shock that the House GOP hasn’t caved because he isn’t used to being told “no.” He is far more used to saying stuff and letting the minions figure out how to do it. He is as stupid as he is lazy.

What will be interesting to see is how easy it will be for people to drop out of Obamacare and go rogue. I’ll bet that they’ll have to cancel the card or close the account just to get the automatic payments to stop.

BuckeyeSam on October 9, 2013 at 8:33 AM

Wouldn’t be a shock if, once they have your Social Security number, even if you cancel your credit/debt card used to sign up for ObamaCare, they simply send you a notification telling you they are now accessing an alternative card/bank account or even brokerage account to deduct your monthly payment.

(Of course, when your real goal is to mandate everyone gets their health insurance through the government, all these glitches may be embarrassing, but they’re not important, in that the failures of the system and the rise in premiums and deductibles will simply allow Team Obama and their supports to double down, and claim ObamaCare isn’t working simply because it doesn’t go far enough. And it also wouldn’t be a shock if many of the same people running into problems now because they were among the first adopters of the healthcase.org website reregistration would fall for that claim hook, line and sinker.)

Back in Nov 2012, the chief liaison (lobbyist) for Blue Cross Blue Shield spoke at a seminar I attended, on the upcoming Obamacare.

In a nutshell, he’d proclaimed he had little confidence that the government would successfully implement the law. The reason being, that the government body responsible for extracting the legislation and providing guidance as to the required minimum coverage (he laughed at ‘birth control for all’ and joked about covering those ready to move to Medicare) had missed their own imposed deadline Jan 1(I think)- AND two subsequent extensions and were on the doorstep of a Dec 1 extension date. The industry had been getting strong armed into providing premium figures to the agency that was going to market the ‘rollout’– those premiums were intended to support The Ones claim of $2,5000 annual savings…

The insurance industry, at that time, was holding firm that they’d not provide ‘falsified’ premium figures.

I believe the endgame (beyond single-payer) is money, period. Since the payments will go “through” ACA to the insurers, it’s a golden opportunity for the government to “skim” the funds, much as they have done with Social Security, etc.

In effect, ACA payments become part of the “general (slush) fund”.

This is shaping up less like an insurance scam than a Nigerian 419 scam.
In effect, when you sign on, you get a message saying,

We know who you are and where you live. You will be destroyed unless you SEND US ALL POSSIBLE MONIE$$$$$$ NOW!!!
NOW!NOW!NOW!NOW!NOW!

(Pardon the caps, but I have actually found such messages in my spam folder. Complete to the spelling and punctuation.)

The difference is, of course, that 419 fraudsters do not have the power of a major government behind them to back up their demands with force.

Suppose that Obamacare is really an income tax hike aimed at low income earners. In that light, and given recent comments by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who advised people who want a delay the system for getting “affordable” health insurance to fix it to instead not buy it and pay the tax instead, the broken Obamacare exchanges are giving the Obama administration what they really want – more tax revenue, without the expense of having to provide subsidies for health insurance to the people who are being prevented by the broken system from being able to obtain it.

Kind of reminds me of Hitler’s staff being afraid of warning him of trying to invade Russia. If he didn’t like what he heard, you were removed or killed. Obama hasn’t gotten to the killed part yet. Oh wait, I forgot about Benghazi.

Ed says, “This revelation makes the Obama administration’s decision to refuse any delays in the individual mandate even more puzzling.”

lol not if you’ve been paying close attention to how President Choom operates!

Ed also says, “Why, then, did the White House refuse a delay? Two reasons come to mind. One is that they saw any delay in the individual mandate as potentially deadly for the system, and the other is that it would be deadly for Democrats.”

Another reason came to mine, touched upon here:

When you’re “The One” it doesn’t matter what other people tell you.

Clink on October 9, 2013 at 8:06 AM

From my readings of Soviet communist history, Stalin never listened to such things when rolling out the latest 5 yr plan. And heads literally rolled when it didn’t work out. Interesting. So many parallels here…

Badger40 on October 9, 2013 at 8:14 AM

KingQueen Choom is a severely mentally retarded incompetent who suffers from normalcy bias…

There’s nothing arguable about it. It is definitely illegal. The executive branch cannot choose which parts of a law are in effect and which are not. That is the responsibility of the legislative branch. Period.

There’s nothing arguable about it. It is definitely illegal. The executive branch cannot choose which parts of a law are in effect and which are not. That is the responsibility of the legislative branch. Period.

Shump on October 9, 2013 at 9:11 AM

The GOP needs to be held accountable for the fact they’ve failed to make this a major point. It’s disgusting how Obama says its been voted, vetted, and then shown constitutional by the Supremes…with all the waivers and delays, Ocare as it is being implemented is nowhere near what was voted, vetted and approved by the SC.

On a number of facets, it’s illegal, not settled– rats, blew the link!

Obamacare Site Resets All User Passwords In An Attempt To Fix Massive Login Problems

Quisp on October 9, 2013 at 9:16 AM

The author is a little off on the JavaScript files. You usually try to break JavaScript up by page so each page isn’t bombarded with JavaScript that isn’t needed. With the CSS he is correct as the site I am currently working on (a drug/interaction lookup portal for retail pharmacies) only has two CSS files, one for structure and one for decoration. To me it sounds like the wrote all of this JavaScript for each individual page and included all of the files in all of the pages, which just defeats the whole purpose of breaking the files up in the first place.

Actually…..the failure wasn’t supposed to happen this quickly. It was supposed to happen *after* the Dems who passed 0bamacare retired, and were replaced with their proteges. The proteges would then push for single-payer, having not been to blame for passing 0bamacare in the first place.

The arsonists are being caught with the gasoline cans in their hands, which reduces the likelihood of their confederates getting the rebuilding contract. That’s the flaw with the Cloward-Piven Strategy. It all has to fail when the ones to blame are no longer available to be retaliated against.

Why is everyone so surprised? People hate this green eyed monster and the majority of site visits are from those attempting to get free healthcare. Technical problems are simply a symptom of a much larger problem for this budget busting piece of trash.

This was all about the PR from the start. I’m sure there was a very elaborate plan for a giant rollout of this POS on October 1, they were going to find a bunch of people who gleefully signed up and got their subsidies and said, “thanks, President Obama and Democrats for giving me health care!!”

This was all about the PR from the start. I’m sure there was a very elaborate plan for a giant rollout of this POS on October 1, they were going to find a bunch of people who gleefully signed up and got their subsidies and said, “thanks, President Obama and Democrats for giving me health care!!”

You can’t stop a great PR plan just because the website doesn’t work!

Some bunch of geniuses here.

rockmom on October 9, 2013 at 10:48 AM

Which makes the decision to go ahead, knowing that no one would be able to register– followed by 6 months of declining interest in even trying due to the bad PR– even more weird.

Except for one thing. Okay, maybe no one will be enrolled to pay the premiums. But by going ahead anyway, on January 1 every one without insurance will be liable for the penalties. They’ll get that. Which will be a lot more than nothing.

Face it obama is like the loud mouthed jerk in the office who once given an assignment does it half-assed. If by some miracle it succeeds he takes all the credit, If it goes south, it’s everyone’s fault but his own.

HumpBot Salvation on October 9, 2013 at 8:29 AM

He’s also the yutz who claims to be an expert at everything. So you give him the job of changing your car’s oil and when you come back a half hour later the alternator is sitting on the block, the dash cover has been removed, transmission fluid is puddled on the floor, and Bark is nowhere to be found.

Bishop on October 9, 2013 at 8:36 AM

He’s the guy who in group projects in college who argues every point with the group, demands group meetings revolve around his schedule, doesn’t come through with his part of the project until a half-assed effort three days after it was due (day before the project due to the professor), and insists that his name goes at the top of the list of team members.

Sad thing is, they may very well still be winning, and if so, it’s almost certainly because of the efforts of the MSM.

If our lousy MSM actually acted as “Watchdogs of Democracy” instead of acting as “Guard Dogs of the Democratic Party”, they certainly wouldn’t be winning, they’d be losing big.

Two allies of the administration, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the controversy surrounding the rollout, said they approached White House officials this year to raise concerns that the federal exchange was not ready to launch. In both cases, Obama officials assured them there was no cause for alarm.

Democrats are constantly overestimating how smart they are. They often have no idea how clueless they can be, because they think they are always the smartest ones on the scene. So, it isn’t surprising that they could get caught with their pants down on this. Still, no matter how much they overestimate their abilities, it’s hard to believe they could be this stupid and clueless as to what was going on, especially with all the information that was being shoved in their faces over the past year. It’s almost like they want it to be an abysmal failure.

I’ve always believed that Obamacare has been designed to ultimately fail, and fail in a way that leaves Single-Payer as the unavoidable replacement. I just can’t believe that they would want it to fail so fast.

What do you suppose would happen if some people created several dozen fraudulent healthcare accounts each?

I mean, after all, the Democrats seem totally okay with literally millions of fake Facebook and Twitter accounts in support of President Shutdown so what difference does it make?

Would not a few million fake healthcare accounts be a form of civil disobedience?

They have already admitted that they can’t verify anything to prevent fraud so it seems like this might be an interesting experiment. Might want to use proxies to stay totally anonymous, of course, but otherwise it seems like a way to register one’s disapproval.

Update from one of the millions thousands of users accessing the site, and one of the millions of people enrolling in an exchange plan seeing what options the law provides:

So I got an email from my contractor last night, explaining the various aspects of the mandate and where they fit into the whole thing. Turns out their plan doesn’t cover all the essential benefits (though they also said they’d have new enrollment offerings later in the mmonth). So now I trudge back over to healthcare.gov to see if keeping the plan I like means I have to pay a tax (and how much), or if I qualify for a credit since my employer is not offering an essential benefits plan.

Try to log in, get numerous error messages. Just tried again a couple minutes ago, in fact, and I’m back to the “we’re too busy to let you do things” page.

Trudge over to the Kaiser page to check my eligibility, get very little useful information.

Trudge over to a site called… valuepenguin?… that lists comparative rates for plans on the Ohio Exchange.

So apparently, my options are:
- pay an average of $550/mo. for an Ocare plan, with no dental or vision, or
- pay ~$430/mo. for my current plan, including dental and vision, and not knowing whether the govt is going to charge me some $600 in additional taxes ($1,500 in two years time).

And all for the “crime” of having a benefit cap. Can’t wait to see what the cost of the new plans will be. Or if they’ll even keep the current plans.

What do you suppose would happen if some people created several dozen fraudulent healthcare accounts each?

trapeze on October 9, 2013 at 1:04 PM

You could have a point there. But let me suggest that those fraudulent accounts were created not by people opposed to Obamacare, but by the libs and dems themselves.
…Well, you know, they probably wanted all their persona’s they registered to vote with to be covered too.